Mixed Media Missive: Umeda Osaka 2024 May 21

 

Places to go, Things to see.  Some of the Music/ Guitar Stores at the northern end of Umeda station Osaka.

So another attempt at a musical comic, under 59 seconds, of an outing to Umeda Osaka. Osaka is only 45 minutes by train from here, but with local stores and online shopping, I really don't need to go there, and hadn't for years.

I bought my Ibanez locking nut Trem Ibanez RG at Watanabe Music online, but had never visited till yesterday. Ishibashi Gakki was the least interesting store to me. Just mostly Fender and Gibson. Most of the 5th floor now seemed to be occupied by VOX_MUSIC a vinyl record CD vendor. Shimamura Gakki 8F Loft was better stocked than the store at my local Mall with recording type gear.

None had a BOSS IR-2 Pedal. Most interesting thing BOSS has done in decades to me, other than SPACE ECHO pedals, but may be a "not for Japan" thing, but I have no evidence of this other than it was released overseas many months ago.

So the 8 string guitar I have so far touched has only been the Viking Guitar God Mattias IA Eklundhs!

Also went to the Umeda TOWER RECORDS for the first time. It is 90% K-POP & J-POP with Rock, Jazz and Classical over in the back corner. Really wasn't much different from the local TOWER RECORDS MINI at the local Mall, just bigger. Not a place I ever go in fact.

The music is just done in this memo project I have for all these music-comics, little adlibbed things all very similar, or the same thing done a bit differently, and so more about "the sound" than musical brilliance

I am very aware most places are NO PHOTOs, NO VIDEOs and not putting stuff on the Internet that some one could claim is a privacy issue.

Just Thinking... I have gone to more exhibitions, cafes and made more art and music in the last 2 years in Japan here than I did in the previous 19 in Sydney Australia. Being retired is part of it, but the are more exhibitions, art materials and gear around with great public transport in Kyoto Japan. Optical Fibre high speed Internet at home was also impossible where I was in Sydney.

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Mixed Media Missive: Nagoya 2024 May 15~16

Last week had an overnight trip to Nagoya for Hideaki Anno, Mamoru Nagano, and Samurai Armor & Sword exhibitions. Many photos and thoughts to consider...

Anno most famous for GAINAX, Evangelion, Shin Godzilla, but received acclaim for his amateur animation, such as the hugely copyright infringing openings of the DAICON fan-con. (Daicon is radish in Japanese, but also DAI means big, the first kanji in Osaka 大坂 (big slope), where they were held, and CON is convention, so the openings have flying radishes in them ) .

Daicon III, IV Opening Animations, and some making of :

He had a natural talent for animating explosions and destruction.

The exhibition has all his armature animation works, storyboards and shows he was influenced by.

He even did these Thunderbird 1 & 2 illustrations for a publication.

In the hallway there was a giant projected wall of the TV shows that influenced him as a kid. Opening titles or key scenes all running at once, without sound. Guessing it was maybe 10 x 30 of 25cmx25cm moving images. It was one of the things no pictures allowed. Of all the shows there, I had seen maybe 8 as a kid. Things like Gigantor, UFO, Captain Scarlet, Marine Boy, Thunderbirds. So much more of that kind of media was in Japan than in Australia when we were kids. Anno is just 2 years younger than I am.

Nagano is mostly known for his Five Star Stories Manga he has been releasing since 1986. But he also did designs for early Gundam and like productions, and the later BRAIN POWERED. Exhibition was mostly no photos, and many framed images were the large watercolors used as the covers of the collected manga volumes I have. Interesting to see the detail in these watercolor works. Highlites had been airbrushed in white. Most of the design sketch work looked like color photocopies stuck to core board. These sketches are in the back of the manga volumes too. I had read the he draws his manga on larger than the standard B4 comic paper, and was disappointed that a comic artist had no original comic pages on a display of his work!

Music and music gear is an influence and one of his productions was called FOOL FOR THE CITY. That 1975 track by UK band Foghat was playing from a speaker over that display.

There was a large monitor showing a clip from his limited release animation GOTHICMADE. Near that was a display of VOLKs garage kits of the mecha in the comic.

Samurai exhibit was a free exhibit at the Touken Building. There is a much larger exhibit with 500 swords at a different location, but this smaller display was fine for me before setting off home. The armour and the sword hand guards are particularly interesting to me.

You end up walking a long way using the trains in Nagoya, and I was worn out by the morning of the 16th.

The music in the 58sec music-comic above cuts between 2 different music tracks, both at 126BPM. One EDM, the other synths+metal. That kind of feels like the jumps in items on display in the exhibitions. So now you know.

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Mixed Media Missive: Dispatches from the Front Lines

 

And the related comic

Fellow Twitter-er/Xer Daveo referred to my comics/ music-comic posts as "Dispatches". It wasn't how I thought of them, but that does seem appropriate.

Dispatch: an official report on state or military affairs.

As I just throw them out onto the Interweb, and they are just things I am thinking about, not addressing  a general thing concerning most people, and so are distinct from other peoples concerns, they are like  military or state reports. A state of me.  Using my art, trying to invent my own original format. 

And these posts were about my visit to a small music bar in Osaka (about 45 minutes from home here in Kyoto) for a clinic by Swedish guitar god and founder of Freak Kitchen, Mattias IA Eklundh on Saturday night May 11 2024. Sponsored by Zanshin, the Japanese Importer of his new FREAK GUITAR LAB 8 & 6 string, made in Sweden guitars.

Mattias is a guy that made me feel like an old friend 5 seconds after meeting him for the first time! I turned up way before anyone else when he was setting up. 

He signed my Freak Kitchen Autobiography book I had brought along, and took photos with me out on the street. I was then his cameraman using his iPhone to record some video and take some photos of him walking up and down the main street outside the bar performing on his 8 string for a future YouTube music video.

I knew of this event as Mattias posted it to his Twitter and Facebook accounts. What he and I didn't know, was you were supposed to ONLY buy tickets for it at the Osaka Sound Messe 2024 at ATC Hall that  weekend. Which I, and later 3 others, hadn't known was required.  A Zanshin staff with Mattias said I thus couldn't attend this small event with only 35 tickets.

But I waited around, Mattias encouraged me to do so, talking to the others that turned up that had bought tickets at the Messe. Most were just fans of Mattias, and not guitarists. A few were and had brought their axes to have him autograph.

Once all the Messe bought ticket holders were in, I and 3 others were allowed to buy the remaining tickets, and mine was #35!

I sat at the bar next to an English Metal fan living in Osaka, Clint, who had attended the Messe but hadn't known he had to buy a ticket there for this offsite event. So the only non Japanese there were Mattias, Clint and myself.  Sitting on the stools at the stage end of the bar was actually a really good spot.

And the tiniest clip of the evening'

It was a great clinic/demo/show. Mattias is a great entertainer and monster guitar player.  He even called out to me a few times during the very private event! When he finished, it was the ticket holders turn to get autographs and photos with Mattias. I bought a FREAK GUITAR LAB shirt, to go with my Freak Kitchen shirt, after asking Zanshin staff if they were available. 

I then went up the stairs to go home, it was way past my normal bed time, and outside the bar on the main street at the bus stop, were 2 Zanshin guys and another sitting waiting for the event to finish.  The senior Zanshin shirt wearing guy, "Harry",  asked me "where are you from", and I answered "Kyoto, but originally Australia". That then turned into a longer chat, about who and why I was in Japan, as implied by the above comic. He knew people in Roland when I showed him old photos in my phone, and the 3rd guy I was told is a famous radio DJ, knew about the Fairlight CMI.  Not just the "An Australian of Scottish decent living in Japan, and Mattias fan" I told Mattias.

Freak Kitchen will be coming to perform in Tokyo and Osaka  in the near future and I hope to get to the Osaka Concert.

Mattias offered to give me a credit with his YouTube music video. He seems to have an amazing ability to remember names, but giving him a name card would not hurt, but I didn't have any. I had a PERMANENT MARKER, I brought for him to sign my book with. I always ask for a printed receipt when I recharge my train travel ICOCA card, and had a few of the older ones still in my wallet I hadn't thrown away yet.   

So got a receipt, like the thing on the right in the above picture, about credit card sized on quite a thick magnetic ticket stock, and wrote on it.   

ADRIAN BRUCE

CAMERAMAN   MAY 11 

@megacurve

And gave it to him. He chuckled at the "cameraman" 😁

Yesterday afternoon, I made some Name Cards with an AVERY BUSSINESS CARD KIT I bought years ago, and never really needed. Who knows when they would be needed again. I hadn't considered that would have been a good thing to have on Saturday night at a guitar clinic.

My sister-in-law suggested the busy graphic isn't part of a Japanese Meishi (名刺 business card). But I think to myself, "why should I care it doesn't look like everyone else?!" . Not doing like everyone else is the way I make things, or at least try too! But it is the header of my social media accounts. 

This post combines a few things I posted to twitter, expanded while putting a slightly different slant on some things. Daveo also suggested when I post articles like this on Social Media I should call them Mixed-Media Missive:  rather than the dull Blog Post: I have been using.

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PROTIP: Being #1 in Your Music Genre!

 

This is a Joke. Kind of. But not really... 

It is also a Musical Comic in a format I haven't seen anyone else do before. 

After learning about and trying my own MELODIC TECHNO a few months ago, been trying to combine the drums, bass and synths from that with heavy down tuned metal guitar, a 7 String in Drop D#.  

Got the 7 String after trying 6 string down tuned for a while a couple of years ago, and discovered it doesn't give you anything you can't get with a 6.  But palm muted D# power chords on the 7 don't have as tight a sound as the 6. Have been thinking that a fan fret 8 string would be more useful than the 7 string, but the tone of the lower stings would probably be worse.  Have been trying different cabinet IRs and Metal Distortion sounds.  

Still haven't found what I am looking for.

This has those lower 2 string muted one finger power chords as that riff on the 7 string.  Listening to this makes me think I couldn't really do anything with an 8 String better than this.

Still considering it all, but, even as a joke, I think this DOOM TRANCE with guitar and synths is interesting. It reminds me a bit of Rammstein, where there is the massive guitar riffs and simple naïve synth sounds on top. A bit like Ministry as well, or maybe NINE INCH NAILS, but this isn't Industrial. This was made only 60 seconds due to the X video limit of my not a blue tick account for the comic idea.

I have tried a few comics as video files recently, but they all suffer from the text balloon timing being wrong, too long, to suit the music track. Panel boarders are also important to indicate passing time, and I've tried a sliding in panel idea to indicate that here.

Bach's two part inventions. Brilliant, but do you know of anyone other than Bach that did two part inventions?

Edit: 2024/5/8

We re-recorded the track and made it 3minutes

The drum sounds and patterns and bass sound are from the previous EDM Bob track. Melodic guitar is a Ibanez RG 6 string, lower register riffs 7 string. 

It really needs to be 5 minutes or so. I would do that by adding a new section, changing key, and maybe a variation on the low riffs, and more shred-ish guitar lead. 2 handed tapping maybe..

The default behavior of Reaper has changed with the V7 lanes stuff. I want to click on a recorded wave to split or adjust something, and it makes the envelope visible instead, the first click.  I guess they are trying to make the envelopes more useable.  I should read the latest manual...

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Just Thinking: The Pivot

 

Have tried a few different approaches to partial comic animation with music. This is another one.  

 

Been trying to combine Melodic Techno and Synths sounds with metal guitar. The guitar is an Ibanez 7 String in Drop D#, and this has much of the palm muted 2 note lower 2 string metal riffing in it. I use Boogex amp/cabinet VST with various cabinet impulses, and the ULTRA METAL pedal here.

It isn't quite the guitar tone I am after, and prefer the tone of my drop down tuned 6 string. The 7th string is just too low, and the lowest string a bit too "floppy".  The WAZA version of the METAL ZONE pedal is better suited to down tuned guitars, but don't have one to try. The Cabinet IR could be better, or use the 2 cabinet mixing options.

This is significant as became interested in an 8 string guitar, and that low tone riffing would be even worse. So should I PIVOT, and not bother with an 8, I wonder?

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology